


Faery

by Eggling



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Gen, mostly cute sibling content though, sort of implied two/jamie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-07-29 09:17:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20079811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eggling/pseuds/Eggling
Summary: Jamie and Polly debate the Doctor's nature.





	Faery

**Author's Note:**

> on [tumblr](https://the--highlanders.tumblr.com/post/186721217696/faery).

Huffing in frustration, Polly flopped down onto the sofa. “The Doctor won’t tell me where we’re going. _Again_.” Tugging at her hair, she glanced across the coffee table to look at Jamie, curled on the opposite sofa with a large book on his lap. He looked so peaceful, worlds away from her boiling irritation. “I wouldn’t mind so much if he admitted he didn’t know, but he has to be so _mysterious_ about it, so he can land us anywhere and pretend he planned it all along.” She gritted her teeth, burying her head in her hands for a moment before looking back up at Jamie. “Are you – are you reading, Jamie?”

“Aye!” Jamie looked up at her, grinning proudly. “Well – lookin’ at the pictures, mostly,” he admitted. “But sometimes I can read a wee bit of it.”

Polly smiled back at him, caught up in his excitement, then paused to eye the book with a touch of suspicion. “Er – what exactly are you reading?” When Jamie held the book up for her to see, she frowned at the cover. “_Astronomical Atlas, Fifty-Second Century Edition_? Why that one?” She surveyed the towering shelves that surrounded them. “Isn’t there anything that might be easier for you to read?”

Jamie shrugged. “The Doctor said I might like it.”

A twinge of annoyance was rising in Polly’s chest again, but she pushed it down. When he was in one of his funny moods, the Doctor seemed to respond to Jamie more than he did to her or Ben, she reminded herself. If Jamie had managed to get anything at all out of him, she ought to consider it a success, some sort of indication that he was beginning to open up again, but she still found herself feeling a little bitter. “He had time to recommend a book for you, but not to tell me where we’re going?”

“Och, no. He wouldnae talk to me this morning either.” Turning back to his book, Jamie flipped over a few pages. “He gave it to me after we went tae that observatory.”

“Mm.” Polly watched him read for a while, wondering absently what he thought of the book. Some pages he moved through quickly, but others he pored over, peering down at them with a smile or a furrowed brow. “Jamie?”

“Aye?”

“What do you think...” She trailed off, tapping her fingers together, trying to figure out exactly what she was asking. “I mean – he’s so different from us. The Doctor, I mean. Sometimes he’ll act like he’s one of us, but then he’ll say something strange and act like we ought to know what it means, or bury himself in the TARDIS for days, and I’ll wonder… What do you think he is?”

Jamie answered without a moment’s hesitation, not even looking up from his book. “One of the fae-folk.”

He spoke with such thoughtless confidence, as if it should have been obvious to anyone who gave the matter any thought, and Polly found herself a little startled. She had grown so used to travelling with Jamie over the past few weeks that at times she almost forgot there was a man from the eighteenth century sitting across from her, reading an atlas of the stars written thousands of years after he was born. He was like the Doctor in a way, seeming so ordinary in one moment but saying something entirely alien in the next. Her head was full of dismissive replies – _don’t be silly, that wasn’t what I was asking, of course he’s not one of the fae-folk, they don’t exist_ – but when she opened her mouth, she said something entirely different.

“What makes you think that?”

Jamie shrugged, and again she was struck by the fact that this was simple to him. “A funny wee man dropped out of the sky, took me into a box that’s bigger on the inside, an’ now we’re flying all over the universe. What was I supposed tae think?”

Polly snorted. “Alright, point taken. But most people from my time don’t believe in faeries anymore. I was asking what sort of alien you think he is.”

“Aye, I know. An’ I told ye what I think.”

“But -”

Finally setting his book aside, Jamie leant across the table to press his hands over hers. “Maybe your aliens an’ my fae-folk are the same thing, just with different names.”

Polly shook her head incredulously. “I’ll never understand how you manage to make sense of things like that, you know.” She laughed, her amusement tinged with self-consciousness. “Ben and I come from a time when people are being sent into space, and the world’s starting to learn about all this, but you seem to be handling all this much better than we did when we first met the Doctor.”

“I’m no’ stupid, ye know.” The pointed look on Jamie’s face made Polly’s cheeks redden. “I mightn’t have gone tae school like ye did, but that doesnae mean I cannae learn things.”

“I didn’t mean it like _that_, Jamie -”

Jamie broke into a grin. “Aye, I know ye didn’t.”

She sighed, propping her chin up on her hands. “Maybe that’s the point, though. Ben and I always think we should be able to understand how things work, because we’re so much closer to -” She gestured to Jamie’s book. “All this.”

“Maybe that’s why the Doctor won’t tell ye where we’re goin’,” Jamie said, a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. “He’s too stubborn tae admit he doesnae know.” He leant in closer again, as if sharing a secret. “Or maybe I’m no’ handling it so well as ye think, an’ I just nod along and then wait until later to ask the Doctor about things.”

“Does he explain things to you?”

“Aye, mostly. He likes tae talk a lot of nonsense, an’ I dinnae always understand it, but he tries.”

“Sounds better than what we manage to get out of him.” Polly gave him a knowing look. “He likes you a lot, you know.”

It was Jamie’s turn to flush red. “Whist ye. All ye have tae do is catch him at the right moment.”

“If you say so.”

“An’ there’s plenty of things I’ll never understand.” Jamie lifted his book again, tipping it forwards to show Polly the open page. “It says here that the stars move, an’ shows ye how the constellations look thousands of years after our time.” He shook his head. “Feels like I understand the Doctor better than I understand that, an’ he’s, well… himself.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Leaning back on the sofa, Polly smiled at him. “I quite like the idea of the Doctor being a faery. I think you might have the measure of him.”


End file.
